A Study On The Effect That Enterprise Ownership Structure Has On The Way Of Environmental Disclosure

In recent years, the national large-scale and prolonged haze weather has made the majority of people deeply feel the seriousness of environmental problems. Emission reduction and pollution control has become an urgent demand of the general public. As the important link between environmental protection and economic activities, environmental information disclosure gradually get the attention of the society from all walks of life. The government has issued a series of relevant policies to regulate environmental disclosure. Some companies have begun to adopt the way of independent reports to disclose environmental information (such as environment reports, sustainability reports or corporate social responsibility reports). However, on the whole, the quality of corporate environmental disclosure is not high. A considerable proportion of heavily polluting companies don’t adopt the way of independent reports to disclose environmental information.The corporate management is directly responsible for the quality and the way of environmental disclosure. The ownership structure as the basis for corporate governance has a profound effect on the behavior of management. How to effectively supervise and stimulate the management in order to affect the behavior of environmental disclosure of the management? To solve this problem, firstly this paper reviews relevant literature on corporate environmental disclosure, influencing factors and the way of environmental disclosure. Secondly this paper defines the concept of ownership structure, environmental disclosure and the way of environmental disclosure, analyses the relationship between ownership structure and the way of environmental disclosure in theory and then put forward the research hypothesis. Thirdly, this paper uses multivariate logistic regression methods to study 703 a-share listed companies of Shanghai and Shenzhen in heavily polluting industries during 2010-2012-a total of2109 samples to test the effect enterprise ownership structure has on the way of environmental disclosure from the perspective of management through the establishment of logistic regression model. The results show that:controlling shareholders, checks and balances shareholders and government regulators can effectively guide the management to publish independent reports to disclose environmental information Managerial ownership can inhibit their own behavior of publishing independent reports. Institutional investors don’t have any effect on the choice of the way of corporate environmental disclosure. Finally, according to the results of the empirical study combined with China’s actual situation, we put forward the following recommendations:the China Securities Regulatory Commission should introduce relevant policies and regulations to improve the mechanism of large shareholders to participate incorporate governance so that we can further promote the regulation of controlling shareholders, checks and balances shareholders over the behavior of management about environmental disclosure. We also must strengthen the legal systems on environmental protection and the supervision of environmental disclosure by government departments. Finally, we should actively strengthen education work on institutional investors to enhance their awareness of social responsibility and provide relevant policy support for the effective participation of institutional investors concerning about the long-term sustainable development of enterprises in corporate governance.